9 783529 014901
ISBN 978-3-529-01490-1
Raptor and human –
falconry and bird symbolism
throughout the millennia
on a global scale
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Karl-Heinz Gersmann ∙ Oliver Grimm (eds.)
Falconry, the art of hunting with birds
(Frederick II) and a living human heritage
(UNESCO), has left many traces, from
western Europe and northern Africa to
Japan. The oldest ascertained testimonies
belong to the first millennium BCE.
The present book, a cooperation between
falconers and scientists from different
branches, addresses falconry and bird
symbolism on diverse continents and in
diverse settings.
1
1
1
1
1
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Advanced studies on the archaeology and history of hunting
edited by the ZBSA
Raptor and human –
Advanced studies on the archaeology and history of hunting, vol. 1.1–1.4
Raptor and human –
falconry and bird symbolism throughout the
millennia on a global scale
1
3
Edited by
Karl-Heinz Gersmann and Oliver Grimm
Publication in considerable extension of the workshop at the
Technical Editor: Isabel Sonnenschein
Layout, typesetting and image editing: Matthias Bolte, Jürgen Schüller
Print and distribution: Wachholtz Verlag – Murmann Publishers, Kiel/Hamburg 2018 https://www.wachholtz-verlag.de/raptor-and-human.html
ISSN 2511-8285
ISBN 978-3-529-01490-1
Bibliographical data of the German National Library. The German National Library catalogues this publication
in the German National Bibliography; detailed bibliographical information is available online under <http://dnb.d-nb.de>.
All rights reserved, including the reprint of extracts, in particular for duplication, the insertion into and processing in electronic systems and photomechanical reproduction and translation.
© 2018 Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology (ZBSA) in the Foundation of the Schleswig-Holstein State Museums, Schloss Gottorf, Schleswig, Germany.
The editors have made every effort to identify all copyright owners. In the case that copyrights have not been cleared, please contact the editors or the publishing house.
Cover picture: Skilled eagle master. Western Mongolia, August 2011 (photo used with the permission of Dr. Takuya Soma).
Falconry definition
Falconry is defined as the taking of quarry in its natural state and habitat by means of trained birds of prey (according to the International Association for Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey [IAF] = www.iaf.org).
The global perspective of the book. Orange: Eurasian steppe (presumed area of origin of falconry); green: the areas considered in the book (map Jürgen Schüller, ZBSA).
5.000 km Base Map: ESRI data set 9.3/ ZBSA Göbel 2014
Base Map:ESRI Data 9.3/ ZBSA Göbel 2014
UNESCO recognition of falconry as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (cf. Hewicker
in this book, Fig. 6).
Frederick II of Hohenstaufen with a bird of prey. Miniature in his falconry book (folio 1v, Codex Pal. lat. 1071, Univer-sitätsbibliothek Heidelberg/Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). Redrawing. After: Hunting in Northern Europe (Neumünster 2013) 344 fig. 1.
Deutscher Falkenorden (DFO) (Cultural Division, CIC/Headquarters, and
CIC/German Delegation) The Archives of Falconry (Boise, Idaho, USA)
Emirates Falconers‘ Club Hagedoorn Stichting
(Netherlands)
Book sponsors
Association Nationale des Fauconniers et Autoursiers (France)
The Falconry Heritage Trust (Wales)
International Association for Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey
Nederlands Valkeniersverbond Adriaan Mollen
North American Falconers’ Association
The Peregrine Fund (USA) Marshall GPS
Japanese Falconiformes Center
Club Mariae Burgundiae (Belgium)
V
List of contents
Book 1
Forewords
Claus v. Carnap-Bornheim and Berit V. Eriksen . . . 1
His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan. . . 2
Oliver Grimm . . . 4
Karl-Heinz Gersmann. . . 6
Oliver Grimm and Karl-Heinz Gersmann . . . 9
Adrian Lombard. . . 10
Glossaries Bird glossary . . . 12
Falconry glossary . . . 13
Indices Short index: by author . . . 14
Short index: by region . . . 16
Short index: by topic . . . 16
Summaries Summary English . . . 18
Summary German . . . 26
Summary Russian. . . 35
Summary Arabic. . . .44
Chapter 1 – Falconry in action and raptor propagation . . . 53
Thomas Richter Practicalities of falconry, as seen by a present-day falconer . . . 55
Mohammed Ahmed Al Bowardi, Majed Ali Al Mansoori, Margit Gabriele Müller, Omar Fouad Ahmad and Anwar S. Dawood Falconry in the United Arab Emirates. . . 87
Ata Eyerbediev This world is a hunting field and good deeds are the prey – the ethical side of tradition. . . 101
Dennis Keen The hunter, the eagle, and the nation: Qazaq traditional knowledge in the post-Soviet world . . . 113
VI
Karl-Heinz Gersmann
Some thoughts on the emergence and function of falconry from the perspective of
a practicing falconer . . . 141 Ellen Hagen
From museum education to practical falconry . . . 147 S. Kent Carnie
North American falconry, from its earliest centuries. . . 157 S. Kent Carnie
The Archives of Falconry: a North American effort to preserve the tangible heritage
of falconry . . . 165 Jevgeni Shergalin
Falconry Heritage Trust: history, structure, goals, current and future work . . . 175 Hans-Albrecht Hewicker
The History of the Deutscher Falkenorden (DFO) and its international relations . . . 187 Tom J. Cade and Robert B. Berry
The influence of propagating birds of prey on falconry and raptor conservation. . . 195
Chapter 2 – Raptors in zoology and biology . . . .221
Frank E. Zachos
Birds of prey – An introduction to their systematics, taxonomy and conservation . . . .223 Anita Gamauf
Palaearctic birds of prey from a biological point of view. . . 233
Chapter 3 – Human evolution, history of domestication and the special role
of the raptor-human relationship. . . 255
Kristiina Mannermaa
Humans and raptors in northern Europe and northwestern Russia before falconry . . . 257 Dirk Heinrich
Are trained raptors domesticated birds? . . . 277 Walter Bednarek
Emotions and motivation of the falconer and his relationship with the trained raptor –
attempt at an evolutionary-biological interpretation . . . 285 Sara Asu Schroer
VII
Chapter 4 – Raptors and religion, falconry and philosophy . . . 323
David A. Warburton
Egypt and earlier: birds of prey in the human mind at the dawn of history . . . 325 By Kerry Hull, Mark Wright and Rob Fergus
Avian actors: transformation, sorcery, and prognostication in Mesoamerica . . . 347 Daniela Boccassini
Falconry as royal “delectatio”: understanding the art of taming and its philosophical
foundations in 12th- and 13th-century Europe . . . 367
Chapter 5 – History of falconry: pioneers of research . . . 389
Leor Jacobi and Mark Epstein
Hans J. Epstein: falconry’s extraordinary historian. . . 391 Rolf Roosen
“The noblest form of hunting ever” – Kurt Lindner and falconry . . . 403
Chapter 6 – History of falconry: basic reflections and new perspectives. . . 421
Ivan Pokrovsky
Stable isotope analysis in raptor and falconry studies . . . 423 Alexandra Pesch
Confiding birds: some short remarks on the “head-with-bird-on-top-of-horse-motif”
on Migration Period gold bracteates. . . 431 Vera Henkelmann
The evidential value of falconry depictions in book illuminations, on seals, and on
tapestries in middle Europe. . . 449 Wietske Prummel
The archaeological-archaeozoological identification of falconry – methodological
remarks and some Dutch examples . . . 467
Book 2
Oliver Grimm
From Aachen in the west to Birka in the north and Mikulčice in the east – some archaeological remarks on bird of prey bones and falconry as being evidenced in
VIII
Ulrich Schmölcke
Central European burials with birds of prey from the middle of the 1st millennium AD –
a short survey of the early history of archaeozoology in connection with these burials. . . 495 Stephan Dusil
Falconry in the mirror of normative sources from Central Europe (5th–19th centuries) . . . 507
Baudouin Van den Abeele
“On the dunghill”: the dead hawk in medieval Latin and French moralising literature . . . 523 Ricardo Manuel Olmos de León
The care of hunting birds in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance according to
the Spanish falconry treatises (1250–1565) . . . 539 Robert Nedoma
New words for new things – an overview on lexical borrowing. . . 557
Chapter 7 – Eurasian steppe: geographic origins of falconry?. . . 563
Pavel Kosintsev and Aleksei Nekrasov
An archaeozoological survey of remains of birds of prey in the West Eurasian steppe. . . 565 Leonid Yablonsky (†)
Were the Early Sarmatian nomads falconers in the southern Urals, Russia, during
the 4th century BC?. . . 579
Ulambayar Erdenebat
A contribution to the history of Mongolian falconry . . . 587 Takuya Soma
Ethnoarchaeology of falconry in nomadic and sedentary society across Central Asia –
rethinking the “Beyond the Boundary” phenomenon of ancient falconry culture . . . 603 Ádám Bollók
A history of the Hungarians before the end of the ninth century: a reading . . . 619 Claus Dobiat, with an archaeological-historical introduction by Oliver Grimm
The rider fibula from Xanten in western Germany (around 600 AD) with a reference
to the falconry of nomadic horsemen of the Eurasian steppe . . . 637 Hans Nugteren
Names for hunting birds and falconry terms in Kipchak (Northwestern Turkic) . . . 645 Jürgen Udolph
IX
Chapter 8 – Roman Empire: the West (Rome) and East (Constantinople)
with very little evidence for falconry up to the 5th/6th centuries. . . 683
Florian Hurka
Falconry and similar forms of hunting according to ancient Greco-Roman sources . . . 685 Andreas Külzer
Some notes on falconry in Byzantium . . . 699
Chapter 9 – Case study: raptor catching, raptor trade and falconry
in northern Europe. . . 709
Oliver Grimm and Frans-Arne Stylegar
A short introduction to Norway, its Viking Age (800–1000/1050) and the question of
the origin of falconry in the country . . . 711 Terje Gansum
The royal Viking Age ship grave from Gokstad in Vestfold, eastern Norway, and its
link to falconry . . . 717 Ragnar Orten Lie
Falconry, falcon-catching and the role of birds of prey in trade and as alliance gifts in Norway (800–1800 AD) with an emphasis on Norwegian and later foreign
participants in falcon-catching . . . 727 Inge Særheim
Place names from south-western Norway with reference to the catching of falcons . . . 787 Lydia Carstens
Land of the hawk: Old Norse literary sources about the knowledge and
practice of falconry. . . 799 Maria Vretemark
Birds of prey as evidence for falconry in Swedish burials and settlements (550–1500 AD). . . . 827 Sigmund Oehrl
An overview of falconry in Northern Germanic and insular iconography,
6th/7th centuries AD to c. 1100 AD . . . 841
Åsa Ahrland
Imagery of birds of prey and falconry in the High and Late Middle Ages (1150–1500)
in the Nordic countries – reflections of actual hunting practices or symbols of power? . . . 861 Joonas Ahola, Frog and Ville Laakso
The roles and perceptions of raptors in Iron Age and medieval Finno-Karelian cultures
X
Matti Leiviskä
The role of birds of prey in Finnish place and personal names . . . 935 Anne Birgitte Gotfredsen
Traces of falconry in Denmark from the 7th to the 17th centuries . . . 947
Book 3
Dirk Heinrich, with an appendix by Wolf-Rüdiger Teegen
Falconry in the Viking Age trading centre of Haithabu and its successor, the medieval
town of Schleswig? . . . 973 Natascha Mehler, Hans Christian Küchelmann and Bart Holterman
The export of gyrfalcons from Iceland during the 16th century: a boundless business
in a proto-globalized world. . . 995 Brian Smith and John H. Ballantyne
The collection of falcons and ‘hawk hens’ in Shetland and Orkney, 1472–1840 . . . 1021 Kristopher Poole
Zooarchaeological evidence for falconry in England, up to AD 1500 . . . 1027 David Horobin
The pen and the peregrine: literary influences on the development of British falconry
(8th century to the present). . . 1055
Eric Lacey
The charter evidence for falconry and falcon-catching in England and Wales,
c. 600–c. 1100 . . . 1089 Richard Almond
Hunting from the fist: looking at hawking and falconry in late medieval England (1000–1500) through art history. . . 1117 Kester Freriks
Bird trapping and falconry in Valkenswaard, the Netherlands, from the 17th to
the 20th centuries – about wild birds as jewels on the falconer’s hand . . . 1149
Ignaz Matthey
The symbolism of birds of prey and falconry in the visual arts of the Netherlands,
XI
Chapter 10 – Raptors and falconry in premodern Europe: overall studies . . . 1193
José Manuel Fradejas Rueda
Falconry on the Iberian Peninsula – its history and literature . . . 1195 Algirdas Girininkas and Linas Daugnora
Premodern hunting with birds of prey in the historical Lithuanian lands:
entertainment, politics or economic necessity?. . . 1215 Liina Maldre, Teresa Tomek and Jüri Peets
Birds of prey from Vendel Age ship burials of Salme (c. 750 AD) and in Estonian
archaeological material . . . 1229 Andrei V. Zinoviev
Early falconry in Russia. . . 1251 Baudouin Van den Abeele
Medieval Latin and vernacular treatises on falconry (11th–16th c.): tradition, contents,
and historical interest. . . 1271
Chapter 11 – Raptors and falconry in premodern Europe: specific studies . . . 1291
Babette Ludowici
Chamber grave 41 from the Bockshornschanze near Quedlinburg (central Germany):
evidence of the practice of falconry by women from the middle of the 1st century?. . . 1293
Ralf Bleile
Falconry among the Slavs of the Elbe?. . . 1303 Wolf-Rüdiger Teegen
The skeletons of a peregrine and a sparrowhawk and the spatial distribution of birds of prey in the Slavonic fortification of Starigard/Oldenburg (Schleswig-Holstein,
northern Germany, 7th–13th centuries) . . . 1371
Zbigniew M. Bochenski, Teresa Tomek, Krzysztof Wertz and Michał Wojenka
Falconry in Poland from a zooarchaeological perspective. . . 1399 Virgílio Lopes
Hunting scene with hawk from Mértola in Portugal (6th/7th centuries AD) . . . 1411
Cliff A. Jost
A depiction of a falconer on a disc brooch of the 7th century from the cemetery
of Münstermaifeld, District of Mayen-Koblenz, south-western Germany . . . 1421 Katharina Chrubasik
The tomb of the Polish King Władysław II Jagiełło (1386–1434) and its possible
XII
Andreas Dobler
The Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel and falconry in the 18th century. Depictions of
a hunt with falcons in the Schloss Fasanerie museum near Fulda, Hesse (Germany). . . 1439
Book 4
Martina Giese
The “De arte venandi cum avibus” of Emperor Frederick II . . . 1459 Martina Giese
Evidence of falconry on the European continent and in England, with an emphasis
on the 5th to 9th centuries: historiography, hagiography, and letters . . . 1471
Agnieszka Samsonowicz
Falconry in the history of hunting in the Poland of the Piasts and the Jagiellons
(10th–16th centuries) . . . . . . 1491
Sabine Obermaier
Falconry in the medieval German Tristan romances . . . 1507 Baudouin Van den Abeele
Falconry in Old French literature. . . 1519 Ingrid A. R. De Smet
Princess of the North: perceptions of the gyrfalcon in 16th-century western Europe . . . 1543
Péter Kasza
Falconry literature in Hungary in an international perspective . . . 1571 Robert Nedoma
Germanic personal names before AD 1000 and their elements referring to birds of prey. With an emphasis upon the runic inscription in the eastern
Swedish Vallentuna-Rickeby burial . . . 1583 Jürgen Udolph
Falconry and bird catching in Germanic and Slavonic place, field and family names . . . 1603
Chapter 12 – Raptors and falconry in premodern times in areas outside Europe. . 1629
Karin Reiter
Falconry in the Ancient Orient? I. A contribution to the history of falconry . . . 1631 Karin Reiter
XIII Karin Reiter
Falconry in Ugarit . . . 1659 Susanne Görke and Ekin Kozal
Birds of prey in pre-Hittite and Hittite Anatolia (c. 1970–1180 BCE):
textual evidence and image representation . . . 1667 Paul A. Yule
Archaeology of the Arabian Peninsula in the late pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods
(1st millennium CE): background sketch for early falconry . . . 1691
Anna Akasoy
Falconry in Arabic literature: from its beginnings to the mid- 9th century . . . 1769
Touraj Daryaee and Soodabeh Malekzadeh
Falcons and falconry in pre-modern Persia . . . 1793 Ulrich Schapka
The Persian names of birds of prey and trained raptors in their historical development . . . 1809 Leor Jacobi
‘This Horse is a Bird Specialist’: Falconry intrudes upon the Palestinian Mishnah in
Sasanian Babylonia. . . 1831 Leslie Wallace
The early history of falconry in China (2nd to 5th centuries AD) and the question
of its origins. . . 1847 Fangyi Cheng
From entertainment to political life – royal falconry in China between
the 6th and 14th centuries. . . 1865
Fangyi Cheng and Leopold Eisenlohr
Ancient Chinese falconry terminology . . . 1883 Ho-tae Jeon
Falconry in ancient Korea . . . 1891 Takayo Kaku
Ancient Japanese falconry from an archaeological point of view with a focus on the
early period (5th to 7th centuries AD) . . . 1919
Yasuko Nihonmatsu
Japanese books on falconry from the 13th to the 17th centuries . . . 1937
José Manuel Fradejas Rueda
1195
Falconry on the Iberian Peninsula – its history and literature
By José Manuel Fradejas Rueda
Love is like hunting, like falconry
(St. John of the Cross, 16th century)
Keywords: Spain, Portugal, falconry, history, literature
Abstract: In this paper, after a short historical introduction to place the reader in Iberian Peninsula milieu,
it will be demonstrated that falconry arrived in Hispania during the Gothic Völkerwanderungen, and
blended with the techniques and knowledge brought by the Arab invaders. Although data from before
the 11th century is scarce, however in the early part of the late Middle Ages (12th and 13th centuries)
flour-ished and since then, falconry enjoyed a period that can be seen as the Golden Age (12th–16th centuries) of
the sport, as IT remained in favour of the upper classes until firearms were more fashionable for hunting than breeding, and rearing wild birds. Falconry remained in favour of the upper classes until firearms were more fashionable for hunting than breeding, and rearing wild birds. Nonetheless, falconry took
refuge in some odd places and persons until the 20th century. In the second part is given a full account of
the technical literature produced in the Iberian Peninsula, a rather complex setting as books on falconry
were written in any one of the three major languages of the Peninsula: Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan.1
The IberIan PenInsula – a shorT hIsTorIcal InTroducTIon
The Iberian Peninsula is located in the southwestern part of Europe, south of the Pyrenees range, and closing the western shore of the Mediterranean basin. It encompasses three sovereign states: the Republic of Portugal (15 % of the territory), the Kingdom of Spain (85 %) and Andorra (less than 0.1 %).2
Iberia was the name given to this territory by the Ancient Greeks, while the Romans named it Hispania. It is known to be inhabited by humans from around 1,000,000 years ago, as the remains found in Atapuerca (province of Burgos) demonstrate (Parés et al. 2013). Known to Greeks and Phoenicians, who founded cities and colonies along the Mediterranean coast of the Peninsula, from Ampuries to Cádiz, it was inhabited by various tribes than can be roughly identified as Celtic, Iberian, Basque (Aquitanians), Turdetani and some other minor groups, that from a linguistic point of view can be divided into two major groups: Indo-European and non-Indo-European speakers.
1 This paper is part of the research project FFI2010–15128 granted by the Kingdom of Spain’s Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Archivo Iberoamericano de Cetrería: Mantenimiento y desarrollo). http://www.aic.uva.es.
1196
In 218 BCE, during the Second Punic War, Rome began the domination of the Iberian Peninsula, resulting in the creation of the province of Hispania. During the late Roman Republic, it was divided into Hispania Ulterior and Hispania Citerior, while during the Roman Empire it was divided into Hispania Tarraconensis, Hispania Baetica, and Lusitania.
In the early 5th century, Germanic tribes invaded the peninsula: Suebi, Vandals and Alans (Fig. 1).
Only the kingdom of the Suebi, established in the northwest (present day Galicia), would endure after the arrival of another wave of Germanic invaders, the Visigoths, who conquered all of the Iberian Peninsula and expelled or partially integrated the Vandals and the Alans. The Visigoths eventually conquered the Suebic kingdom (584–585) and the Byzantine Empire’s (552–624) strong-holds on the south coast of the peninsula and the Balearic Islands. As a result, there was founded the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania, establishing its capital in the city of Toledo.
In 711 CE, a small Muslim force led by Tariq ibn-Ziyad landed at Gibraltar. After the defeat of the Visigoth king Roderic, they invaded the Visigoth Kingdom of Hispania and brought most of the Iberian Peninsula under Islamic control in an eight-year campaign.3 Al-Andalus (possibly ‘Land of
the Vandals’) was the Arabic name given the Iberian Peninsula by its new rulers.
From the 8th to the 15th century, the Iberian Peninsula was incorporated into the Islamic world and
became a centre of culture and learning, especially during the Caliphate of Cordoba, which reached its height under the rule of Abd ar-Rahman III (c. 889–961). After the fall of the Umayyad
Andalu-3 Muslim desire to dominate Europe led them into the Frankish Kingdom, until they were completely defeated at the Battle of Tours (also known as the battle of Poitiers) by Charles Martel in 732.
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
BLACK SEA ATLANTIC
OCEAN
Barcelona Rome410 Toulouse
Toledo
Vouillé 507 Suebi
F R A N K S
V A N D A L S V I S I G O T H S
Byzantine 711
Byzantine Empire 378
376
397
640
500 km Base map: ESRI 2010
N
Falconry mosaics Battles
Visigoths’ route Arabian route
1197 sian kingdom (1031), Al-Andalus was fragmented into a number of minor states and principalities known as taifas and became part of the Berber Muslim empires of Almoravids and Almohads until the final defeat of the Emirate of Granada (1492).
After the rapid Muslim domination of the peninsula, many of the ousted Gothic nobles took ref-uge in the unconquered north Asturian highlands. From there, they aimed to reconquer their lands from the Moors; this war is known as the Reconquista, and the Peninsula was the scene of almost constant warfare between Muslims and Christians for seven centuries (Fig. 2).
During the Middle Ages, the Christian part of the peninsula housed the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Navarre, León and Portugal, and moving south they retook the territories under Muslim rule. Under king Alfonso VI, the city of Toledo was captured (1085), and from that moment started the gradual Muslim decline, and with the fall of Córdoba (1236), and Seville (1248) the Emirate of
Madrid 1083 Coimbra 1064 Porto 866 León 856 Zaragoza 1118 Huesca 1096 Badajoz 1230 Córdoba 1236 Toledo 1085 Zamora 893 PORTUGAL GRANADA NAVARRA ARAGÓN GALICIA CATALUÑA ASTURIAS LEÓN PORTUGAL CASTILLA GRANADA NAVARRA ARAGÓN GALICIA CATALUÑA ASTURIAS LEÓN Barcelona 801 Gerona 785 Lisboa 1147 Madrid 1083 Valencia 1238 Faro 1249 Soria 1080 Tortosa 1148 Coimbra 1064 Porto 866 Zamora 893 León 856 Cavadonga 722 Alarcos 1195
Navas de Tolosa 1212 Zaragoza 1118 Huesca 1096 Algeciras 1344 Málaga 1487 Badajoz 1230 Sevilla 1248 Córdoba 1236 Granada 1492 Toledo 1085 Murcia 1243 Palma de Mallorca 1229
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
200 kmBase map: ESRI 2010
N
Fig. 2. Spain/Portugal and the Reconquista. Thick black: kingdom boundaries; brown line: frontier between Christian king-doms and Al-Andalus by IXth-century; green line: ditto, by XIth century; blue line: ditto, late XIIth century; red line, ditto
mid-XIVth century; purple: ditto, XVth-century. Dates indicate when the city was taken from Muslim rulers (map J. Schüller,
1198
Granada was the only Muslim territory of the Iberian Peninsula. By this time, in the peninsula, there were four kingdoms: Portugal4, Castile and Leon (unified as a kingdom in 1230), Aragon and Navarre
(absorbed by Castile in 1515). The kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were personally united because of the marriage of the Catholic Monarchs (1469), however, the dynastic union was achieved by their heirs, the Habsburgs of Spain (1506–1700) while the final political union of both kingdoms, as the Kingdom of Spain, was achieved with the accession of Philip of Bourbon (1683–1746) to the throne of Spain after the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714).
Falconry on The IberIan PenInsula – an hIsTorIcal ouTlIne
Arab sources speak of a courtly ceremonial of the Ladariqa Kings of Al-Andalus, i.e. the Visigoth Kings of Spain. Every time that the King rode in the company of his entourage, they set off his peregrine falcons. During that time falcons were waiting on over the king’s head, stooping and ringing up. They did not land until the king dismounted and, having dismounted, all the birds perched around him. One day, King Ūrīq or Awarīq was riding through the countryside in this fashion when suddenly a bird took off from the ground and one of the peregrines waiting on over the king’s head stooped and trussed the bird. The king was amazed by this action, and from that moment on urged his falconers to teach his falcons to hunt in such a way.
This story, told for the first time in the Arab falconry treatise Kitāb d.awārī at.-t.ayr written by al-G·it.rīf ibn Qudama al-Gassani in the 8th century CE ( G·IT.rīF 2002), helps to prove that falconry
was introduced in the Iberian Peninsula by the Visigoths sometime between the 5th and early 8th
centuries. This Germanic tribe had wandered through Europe – Greece, Italy, and southern France – before settling down in Spain. Such is the most widely accepted theory of the spread of falconry through southern-Europe, based on the falconry mosaics found in the Villa of the Falconer at Argos (Greece) dated in the 5th century (ÅkersTröm-houGen 1974) and on the writings of two 5th century
Gallo-Roman noblemen: Sidonius Apollinarius and Paulinus of Pella (hurka in this book).
Although falconry seems to have been introduced into the Iberian Peninsula by the Visigoths, they did not leave any reliable data about the sport. Saint Isidore of Seville (6th–7th c.), in his
Etymolo-gies, says that some birds submit themselves to man’s desire, and amongst those birds is the accipiter.5
Nevertheless, this bit of information seems to be a later addition to Saint Isidore’s work.6
However, quite recently there has come to my attention a Visigothic Mosaic, unearthed in a small town in Southern Portugal on the west bank of the River Guadiana. Underlying an Arabic building were discovered a series of mosaics that have to be dated some time before 712, the year Mirtyla Iulia was taken over by the Muslims invaders and became Mārtulah. Among the mosaics discovered there is a fragmentary hunting scene, known to scholars as Mosaico do Cavaleiro (loPes in the book).
Most of the birds on the scene are impossible to identify. On the right-hand side, a bird can be roughly recognized as a duck. In the top portion of the mosaic, only the tail of a bird is preserved: its shape points to a magpie but the colour scheme does not fit. In the lower part there is a big bird; some authors have identified it variously as an ostrich or a great bustard (Otis tarda), but the ring around
4 Portugal had been an independent state from its foundation in 1139 until the present day, except for a short period, 1580–1640, when it was incorporated to the Crown of Castile and giving way to the Iberian union.
5 ‘[…] aliae ad manum se subiiciunt, ut accipiter’ (XII, 7).
6 This also seems to be the case for the words of Julii Firmici Materni contained in his Astronomicorum libri octo (Venetia 1499) when he says: ‘In Virgine Mercurius si fuerit inventus, quicunque sic eum habuerit, fortes erunt, industrii, sagaces, equorum nutritores, accipitrum, falconum, caeteraunque avium, quae ad aucupia pertinent, similiter et canum, molossorum, vertagorum, et qui sunt ad venationes accomodati.’ (V, vIII; sig. bb10v). Most scholars believe that this is an
1199 the eye, the grey cap, its size, long neck, leg structure and grey-bluish plumage point to a crane. These three birds on their own would be of no interest if they were not accompanied by a man riding a horse who carries a bird on his left wrist. The wing/tail proportions for the bird on the horseman’s wrist and the black stripes in the bird’s tail make us think it must be a goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), and its size in comparition with the horseman helps us to believe that it must probably be a female goshawk.
This scene is the best evidence that speaks of the presence of falconry in the Iberian Peninsula and helps to show that it came to Hispania with the Visigoths or even with the Barbarian tribes – Suebi, Vandals and Alans – that crossed the Iberian Peninsula from North to South before they crossed the Straits of Gibraltar or were assimilated by the Visigoths. In fact, a mosaic in the Roman villa of Kélibia, Tunisia, in the Roman Province of Africa shows different hunting systems employed in the 5th or 6th centuries. This little encyclopaedia of the hunt in Northern Africa shows (from top to
bottom; cf. blanchard-lemée et al. 1995, pl. 129): 1) hare hunting on horse back; 2) wild boar with nets; 3) on the left falconry, on the right bird trapping with birdlime; and 4) stalking horse to hunt patridges, which supports this line of thinking. The interesting portion for our topic is the third scene, left section: there are too many details for us not to consider it as a falconry scene (Fig. 3). Firstly we have a goshawk that sits on a gloved arm and it is secured by means of a leash. The hunter carries a special bag under his left arm where he keeps tidbits to be given to his bird when it does something good. The hunter is carrying a hunted patridge and he and his hawk are after a hare. The scene on the right is a complement, as the man that hunts by means of a birdlime is taking advantage of the fact that the presence of the falconer leads the thrushes to cluster in the shelter of the olive-tree and the birdtrapper can get them easily. There are many other representation of this birdtrapping throughout the Roman World.
Fig. 3. Falconry depiction on the mosaic from the Roman villa of Kélibia, Tunisia, 5th/6th century (redrawn by L. F. Thomsen
1200
Although information about falconry in the Christian part of the Peninsula until the 9th century
is scarce – a few notes in the charters of the cathedrals of Oviedo and León, in northern Spain, territories where the Spaniards of the time sought refuge–, it abounds in Al-Andalus. It is not that old either, just one hundred years earlier, but of great importance. I am referring to the Calendar of Cordoba7, an Arabic work on astronomy that contains a farming section at the end of
every month. These sections of the Calendar inform us in detail about falconry in Al-Andalus. The Calendar covers many aspects of falconry, from basic ornithological observations to actual hunting. Among the ornithological information are the migratory times for the shadhāniqāt al-libliyya, better known to Spaniards as the nebli,8 the breeding season of the shadhāniqāt al-bahriyya (the
Falco peregrinus brookei, or Spaniards’ baharí),9 the time needed to incubate the eggs, when they
hatch,10 even when sparrowhawk eggs hatch,11 or how long it takes the chicks to be completely
feathered.12 With regard to the hunting information, the Calendar informs us when the hunting
season begins and ends,13 when certain kinds of quarry are available, and how the falcon should be
enclosed in the mews for the annual moult, from May until the beginning of August.14
Frederick II is said to have introduced the hood in Europe after his stay in the Holy Land (1228–1229).15 However, the Andalusian poet cAbd al-Yalil ibn Wahbun, seems to have spoken about
the hood in a poem dedicated to Khaliph al-Muctamid, who died in 1095. Ibn Wahbun’s poem says:
And puts the head through the long hood (d.âfiya) with which you have covered it, and it falls over her shoulders as a wrap (tawšîh.) (Pérès1953, 348).
Andalusian poetry is full of references to falconry. Let us hear how the 11th century vizier Abu Bakr
al-Qubturnu begged the King of Badajoz for the gift of a falcon:
O, King! Your predecessors were proud men of an incomparable race. You have blessed my thick neck with great presents.
Please, embellish my arm with a gyrfalcon (ağdal) as well.
Present me with a bird with such long wings that it might make us believe that its claws bring the North wind.
A falcon that when it turns to the right and to the left, its body glitters as dew drops spread on a meadow, and looks like a Yemeni cloth.
I will carry it in the morning, proud of carrying in my arm the wind, and catch a free bird with the aid of a trained one (mukabbal) (Pérès 1953, 348).
7 This Calendar is better known by two Latin translations, one from the 12th c. and another one dated in the 13th c. (dozy/
PellaT 1961; marTínez Gázquez/samsó 1981; Fradejas rueda 2008b). In the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris)
there is an Arab manuscript containing a 16th-c. copy (BNF, ms. Arabe 2521).
8 ‘exeunt falcones deblensi ab occeano’ (marTínez Gázquez/samsó 1981,65).
9 ‘falcones marini nidificant et calcant’ (marTínez Gázquez/samsó 1981, 27).
10 ‘pariunt falcones merini subponunt oua triginta diebus’ (marTínez Gázquez/samsó 1981, 38).
11 ‘et exeunt pulli Sparuerini de ouis’ (marTínez Gázquez/samsó 1981, 48).
12 ‘exeunt pulli falconum de ouis et cooperiuntur pennis post dies triginta’ (marTínez Gázquez/samsó 1981, 43).
13 ‘et incipiunt uenaciones usque ad initium ueris’ (marTínez Gázquez/samsó 1981, 65).
14 ‘Et ponuntur in muta accipitres et falcones, et remanent in muta usque ad principium Augusti aut finem eius, secundum quantitatem virtutis eorum et sanitates ipsorum’ (dozy/PellaT 1961, 91).
1201 Ibn Hafāğa (1058–1138) sings of a princely hunting day:
The prince pursues the game with falcons that seem to be bound to their quarry; they have swift wings and red hands.
Their flanks dressed with striped (habira) cloth. Their eyelids tinted with gold.
He sent them off with great expectations, and they returned with their claws and beak (red) tinted(Pérès 1953, 349).
The most illustrative images of the Andalusian Arabic falconry are tiny scenes carved on ivory from the 10th
century onwards, such as the one on the lid of the Leyre chest16 or the al-Mugira pyxis17 (Fig. 4; cf. díez GIménez
2015; makarIou 2012).
From the Arab world, from Arabic falconry, the Span-ish and Portuguese took some of the most common words employed in falconry. This is the case of the name for the two main varieties of falcons: the neblí/nebrí and the
baharí/bafarí; for one of the two species of the lanner
falcon: alfaneque; for the Barbary falcon, known as a
tagarote; as well as for the perch where the falcons are left
to rest, the alcándara. Related to falconry, and of Arabic origin, is the name of one of the quarters of Granada, the
Albaizín, that is, the Falconers’ District.
Falconry is closely connected to the independence of the kingdom of Castile (10th c.) from the kingdom of León.
Legend says that the king of León wished to buy a precious goshawk and a horse from the Count of Castile. The Count desired to give the hawk and the horse as a gift, but the king insisted on buy-ing them. They came to an agreement: the kbuy-ing bought the horse and the hawk for 1000 marks. The money would be paid by a certain date but, if not, it should be doubled every day thereafter. Once the king of León got the horse and the hawk, he forgot his debt. Three years later, the amount due was so great that ‘not all the treasures of France would be sufficient’. In fact, this legend is of Arabic origin as is demonstrated by a piece of an 11th-century Arabic fabric decorated with a falcon sitting
on horseback discovered at San Salvador de Oña (province of Burgos) (abásolo 1976, 84).
Many years later, another Castilian hero is connected with falconry. After a quarrel with King Alfonso VI, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar goes into exile and the poet finds no better way to express the desolation of his estate than to show him sorely weeping, turning his head and looking at his castle, as
he saw open gates and doors without locks, empty hangers, without furs or mantles and without falcons or moulted goshawks.18
In the kingdom of Castile, in 1252, King Alfonso the Wise (1221–1284; king from 1252) enacted a law on sumptuary expenditures (García rámIla 1945). In that law, we learn which were the privileged hunting birds: the goshawk, the peregrine falcon, the saker, the European lanner falcon and the tiny
16 Dated 395 H (c. 1004 CE); Museo de Pamplona, Spain.
17 Dated 357 H (c. 968 CE); Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. no. AO 4068.
18 Lines 1–5, transl. by Matthew Bailey; http://www.laits.utexas.edu/cid/ (July 13, 2005, checked Jan, 3, 2014).
1202
sparrowhawk. All these birds are priced according to several criteria: their gender (females were more expensive than males), whether or not they had been tamed, and to which quarry they flew. It is of great importance and interest, as it allows us to compare the real cost of birds: the very best moulted crane-goshawk was priced at 30 coins, the equivalent of ten cows. This sumptuary law is even more important as it includes the very first regulations regarding the preservation of eyries, eggs and the best moment to take the birds from their nests. Hawks should not be removed before they have two ‘blacks’, that is, not before the birds have their feathers sufficiently grown as to show two black stripes on their tails. Falcons could only be taken from the nest from mid-April on. This law also forbade the exportation of any hunting bird. It furthermore set the hunting season, although the prohibition of hunting between Easter and the end of September did not apply to falconry. Hunting with birds was permitted all year long.
A similar law, known as the Lei de almotaçaria, was enacted in the kingdom of Portugal the following year (1253).19 Like the Castilian law, it established the penalties to be paid by those who
unlawfully took hawk’s eggs or eyasses from eyries before a certain date.20 However, it introduces
a new and very important aspect related to the conservation of birds: the law allowed only one of every three birds to be taken. The Lei de almotaçaria is also very interesting as it determines the prices for some of the hawk’s furniture: gloves, bells, jesses and creances.21 From this moment on,
most of the royal and private expenditure books furnish us with details of many aspects of the sport not told either by the treatises on falconry or by pictorial evidence. The account books of Queen Isabel (1451–1504; queen from 1474) are very illustrative (Fradejas rueda 2005a). They inform of the
rewards given to those who recovered any lost bird, the amount paid for a cow skin to make hoods or for a piece of red velvet to make lures, even the kind, colour and quantities of cloth used to make the falconers’ garments.22 The Duke of Alba’s ledger books (?–1488) are even more detailed than the
Queen’s books as they provide information about the amount spent on pigeons to feed the falcons (calderón orTeGa 1996).
The rulers of the different Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula were very conscious about the preservation of hunting birds. The most peculiar aspect is found in the laws and practices of the kingdom of Majorca. In the Balearic Islands the rulers of Aragon and the Bishops of Barcelona and Majorca held a falcon wardenship that kept eyries under close surveillance to prevent poaching and was aware of the correct time to take the nestlings. Charters of the Majorcan wardenship are quite detailed. Some of them, dated between 1316 and 1319, note that ravens took the chicks from the nests. Another charter, from 1341, tells that a genet (Genetta genetta) devoured the chicks, and the warden is sure of the animal that killed them because he found genet waste near the nest (bover/rossello
2003).
These few notes alone prove that falconry was well established in the Middle Ages and that the golden age of falconry in the Iberian Peninsula dates from the 13th to the 17th century, as is also true
19 This law survives in its Latin version, for a translation into modern Portuguese see PIñeIro/rITa 1988.
20 ‘I order (and forbid) with fortitude that no one will dare to catch neither goshawk eggs, nor from hawk, nor from falcon and, if anyone catches, that person will pay for any egg ten pounds and that person, and his belongings, will remain entirely at my disposal; and no one will dare to catch the goshawk, except fifteen days before St. John Baptist’s Fest and, if someone catches, that person will pay me for any goshawk ten morabitinos, remaining that person, and his belongings, entirely at my disposal; and no one will dare to catch neither the hawk nor the falcon, except one of every three, and anyone that will catch will pay me a hundred soldos for each one’ (PIñeIro/rITa 1988, 18–19).
21 ‘The best bell for goshawk will be worth one soldo and the best bell for hawk will be worth eight dinheiros; the best jesses for goshawk without silk line will be worth three dinheiros and the best jesses for hawk will be worth two
dinheiros; the best strap for stag or roe deer or deer for belts or for the leash will be worth three dinheiros and the best smoothed ram strap will be worth one dinheiro’ (PIñeIro/rITa 1988, 19).
22 Another description is made in 1554 by Fernándezde ovIedo (1870). A modern depiction is to be found in Pareja
1203 for the rest of Europe. Throughout these centuries, there is a wealth of evidence of the practice of falconry. Some is pictorial, such as the miniatures found in the Cantigas of Santa María by Alfonso the Wise, or the Book of Hours of Queen Isabel of Spain or that of King Manuel of Portugal (1469–1521; king from 1495), prayer books, law books, bestiaries, woodcuts, frescoes on church walls and ceilings, paintings, sculptures carved on tombs and capitals, wood carvings or stained glass windows. In literature, whether written in Spanish, Portuguese or Catalan, images of falconry re-appears constantly from the dawn of the Romance Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula. Some of the most celebrated poets and writers of the time, such as Juan Manuel (1282–1348), Pero López de Ayala (1332–1407), Ausias March (1397–1459), Luis Zapata (1526–1595) were devoted falconers and hunters. Some even wrote the most celebrated books of falconry.23
During the Middle Ages, a prosperous hawk trade flourished in the Iberian Peninsula. We have already seen that in 1252 the Spanish King Alfonso the Wise forbade the exportation of hawks bred in his kingdoms, but not the domestic trade or the importation of foreign birds. The hawk trade was widely spread throughout Europe; the most exotic account is found in Pero López de Ayala’s book on falconry (Libro de la caza de las aves, finished in 1386, see lóPez de ayala 1986). At the end of his work, when dealing with the migrations of birds, he says that somewhere in the Sultanate of Babylon, during a fortnight it was possible to hunt a great quantity of cranes, and that the Arabs of his time were very keen on the use of gyrfalcons for such hunting. Once, while he was in Paris as Ambassador to the King of Castile he had met a trader from Genoa that had established business in Paris, Genoa and Damascus. Among the goods the Italian traded, there were gyrfalcons, which he took from Northern Europe to Damascus – when López de Ayala visited the businessman, there were 80 gyrfalcons in his warehouse. As the journey was extremely long and dangerous, Arab customers paid for all the birds that travelled from Paris to Damascus, whether they arrived alive or dead. They did so to keep a steady flow of birds.
The Charters of the Crown of Aragon, of which the kingdom of Majorca was part, prove that hawk trading was a very complex activity. 14th-century Majorcan waybills are very detailed documents
in which every bird being shipped was described: the species, sex, colour and age; the owner or to whom it should be given in the absence of the owner; the vessel and captain’s name; the route to be followed and the name of the person in charge of the bird. According to the law, the person in charge had to be well acquainted with the handling of hunting birds to avoid any kind of accident while en
route. These documents also stated the cost of transportation, the wages due to the person in charge,
plus the cost of the pigeons needed to feed the falcons while en route, the grain to feed the pigeons, and the cages where the falcons were kept. Some waybills describe the materials used to build the cages (known as alcahaces, another word of Arabic origin used in Spanish falconry). The most usual were made of thick cane, hardwood, and nails with cloth to pad the cage.
The Aragonese archives furnish documentary evidence of Majorca being not only a port of de-parture for falcons bred in the Balearic islands, but also a port of call for ships sailing from many parts of the Mediterranean basin to Southern France and Eastern Spain. The charters mention falcons from Sardinia, Sicily, Cyprus, North Africa (alfaneque and tagarote falcons) and Byzantium (bover/rosselló 2003).
At the end of the Middle Ages, a historic achievement of the greatest importance took place: in October 1492, a New World was discovered. The following year, among the men embarked with Christopher Columbus on his second voyage to America there was a man named Pedro Dársena, who was a falconer (cetrero) by profession (varela marcos et al. 1998). There is no more information
23 For a history of falconry literature written in the Iberian Peninsula see Fradejas rueda 1998, and for a complete
1204
about this first European falconer on the other side of the Atlantic; all too sure he died en-route. This is the only explanation for Columbus’s words in a letter to the Catholic Monarchs: he says that there are plenty of falcons in La Española island (today’s Dominican Republic), and regrets not having a falconer with him to capture them. As a response, King Ferdinand (1452–1516; king from 1479) in August 1494 ordered that a redero, a bird-trapper, should be sent to catch and bring back as many falcons as possible (marTínez de salInas alonso 2011). And in 1501 was established the post of
Redero Mayor de Indias (Royal Falcon-trapper in America; cf. marTínez de salInas alonso 2013).
The chronicles of the Age of Discovery contain a wealth of information about the New World, but they neither mention that the natives practised falconry,24 nor that the conquerors were interested on
it (Fig. 5; cf; the other paper by the author in this book). These chronicles describe many species of birds of prey and compare them with the birds found in the writers’ homeland. There are some stories about falconry, the most interesting of all is told by Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492–1518?) in his True
History of the Conquest of New Spain, as he seems to be the first writer to give an account of trapping
a sparrowhawk to be trained for the practice of falconry. This took place in the presence of Emperor Moctezuma (1466–1526) and the falconer was a captain of the Spanish Army led by Hernán Cortés (1485–1547). His name: Francisco de Acevedo.
24 Some falconers (and, at the same time, amateur historians) try to establish that falconry was known to pre-Colombian Americans, but these attempts are tendentious interpretations of misunderstood images and texts. For a full discussion on the topic see Fradejas rueda on “Falconry in America” in this book.
1205 Another writer, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616), tells us in his Royal Commentaries that in 1557, in the city of Cuzco (Peru) there was a man from Seville that trained a very dark coloured falcon that looked like the North- European variety of the Falco peregrinus. This man trained the falcon to fly to his hand and to the lure from a long distance, but he was never able to catch any quarry with it. We will have to wait until 1615 for the first depiction of an American falconer. We will found it in Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Primera nueva corónica y buen gobierno
autograph written in 1615/1616 (Fig. 6).25
By the end of the 16th century, Luis de Zapata (1526–
1595), a nobleman of the entourage of Emperor Charles V (1500–1558), wrote a lengthy poem on falconry (Libro de
cetrería). Among the exotic information from the New
World, he spoke of a new species of falcon, the falcon aleto. He described it as a small, short-winged (but not to be confused with the falconry term ‘short-winged’, i.e. with
an accipiter), long-tailed bird that was used to hunt
par-tridges, quails and magpies (zaPaTa 1583, lines 6815–28).
No one is sure which American falcon it might be: the question is open to debate as birdwatchers and falconers do not agree. For some falconers it may be the Falco deiroleucus
(jack 1996), for others the Falco femoralis (bernIs 1994; ceballos aranda 2002) and for others even
a member of the genus Micrastur (Pareja-obreGón de los reyes 1997).
We are nearing the demise of falconry in Spain and Portugal. It is not certain when or why falconry became obsolete in the Iberian Peninsula. If we are to believe the words of the last writer on falconry in the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, Diogo Fernandes Ferreira, who published his
Arte de caça da altaneria in Lisbon in 1616, he wrote his book to renew the grandeur of the sport
among his fellow countrymen. Apparently, he did not succeed in his aim. From the middle of the 17th
century onwards, falconry is almost a thing of the past. The hunting laws still mention falconry, the royal households of Spain and Portugal had falconry departments, but more as a part of a die-hard custom than as a sport that was practised. It is in this context that the falconry party described by Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) in the second part of his Don Quixote has to be taken:
It so happened that the next day towards sunset, on coming out of a wood, Don Quixote cast his eyes over a green meadow, and at the far end of it observed some people, and as he drew nearer saw that it was a falconry party. Coming closer, he distinguished among them an elegant lady, on a pure white palfrey or hackney caparisoned with green trappings and a silver-mounted saddle. The lady was also wearing green robes, and was so richly and splendidly dressed that splendour itself seemed personified in her. On her left hand she bore a hawk, a proof to Don Quixote that she must be some great lady and the mistress of the whole hunting party, which was, in fact, true.26
25 København, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, GKS 2232 4°, fol. 864v.
26 My translation of cervanTes(2005, 779). Elsewhere, Cervantes remember us that ‘falconry […] is only for kings and
great lords’.
1206
We also surmise that falconry is something of the past when Cervantes describes a member of the landed-gentry: this man admits that among his pursuits is hunting, but that he ‘keeps neither falcons nor greyhounds, nothing but a tame partridge or a bold ferret or two’ (cervanTes 2005, 664).
The falconry scenes depicted in some works of art seem somewhat fictional: the 18th century
tapestry woven by Jacob Vandergoten (1659–1724) for the King of Spain and the tile panel at the Palacio do Marqués de Tancos in Lisbon show a strange quarry. In both cases, the quarry would seem to be a heron, but it is wrongly depicted to have a short neck and a long tail.
While in Spain, the Royal Falconry was abolished by King Fernando VI (1713–1759; king from 1746) in 1748, in Portugal there was a short revival during the second half of the 18th century. In 1752,
ten falconers from Brabant hired by the Royal Household arrived at the Salvaterra de Magos Royal mews in Portugal. There are some accounts of magnificent hunting parties, in the most baroque style: hunters, guests and falconers dressed in rich colourful clothes with gold and silver ribbons, accompanied by musicians and manifold servants. Nevertheless, this revival did not last long, as the Portuguese Royal Falconry was abolished by the Parliament in 1821.27
hIsPanIc Falconry books – an ouTlIne
As we have seen, falconry played an important role in any royal or noble household. It has bequeathed a vast amount of literary, artistic and legal documents. Moreover, amongst the literary evidence, there is an interesting body of technical literature. Unfortunately, there was no model from Antiquity to fol- low, as falconry was unknown to Greeks and Romans, so the authors had to create their own discourse. This is the reason why falconry treatises only came into existence half a millennium after the sport arrived in Western Europe, around the mid-10th century (cf. vanden abeele ‘Treatises’ in this book).
The first Western falconry treatise we have knowledge of is the so-called Anonymous of Vercelli, discovered in the flyleaves of a codex housed in the Vercelli Cathedral (Italy). It is a collection of 28 remedies (in reality there should be 33, but the first five are wanting), apparently written in Italy, to cure various diseases that may affect a hunting hawk (bIschoFF 1984). This little handbook started a new tradition, which lasted for 300 years. This new sort of hunting books shared a few common features: they were written in Latin, they were no longer than five or six folios, and they dealt only with falcons’ ailments. Some of the texts dating from this first period, up until the mid-13th century,
were widely known throughout Europe and their popularity continued until falconry lost popular-ity. This is the case of Dancus Rex, Guillelmus Falconarius and Gerardus Falconarius (TIlander
1963). The first two were known not only in Latin but also in a number of vernacular Romance languages, amongst them Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan. Many other short treatises of this sort were written and used by author after author; in some instances, during the 13th century, they were
integrated into encyclopaedic works, such as Vincent de Beauvais’ (1190?–1264?), Brunetto Latini’s (c. 1220–1294) or Albert the Great’s (1193/1206–1280; cf. vanden abeele 1993).
However, there is another older non-Western tradition. Some 300 years before the text of Anony- mous of Vercelli was written, in the Mesopotamian city of Ctesiphon (Iraq) Byzantine, Persian and Indian books on falconry were collected. In the second half of the 7th century, Adham ibn Muhrih,
an Arab nobleman at the service of the Umayyad Caliphs, translated the texts he found in Ctesiphon into Arabic. In the early 8th century, al-G·it.rīf, a young Syrian falconer who held a high post in
the Abbasid Caliphate, reworked Adham’s compilation (G·IT.rīF 2002). In his maturity, the third
Abbasid Caliph commissioned him to write a new work on falconry, which was considered to be
1207 the best book on the subject. During the reign of al-Mutawakkil, the tenth Abbasid Caliph, a new treatise that made an extensive use of al-G·it.rīf’s text was written.28
These new books on falconry reached the West through two different channels: the Norman kings of Sicily and the kingdom of Castile. Emperor Frederick II (1212–1250; emperor from 1220) had Moamin and G·it.rīf translated into Latin when he was gathering material for his magnum opus – De
arte venandi cum avibus; and the future Alphonso X oversaw a translation of al-Muttawakil’s into
a vernacular language, Old Spanish, under the title of Libro de los animales que cazan (Fradejas rueda 1987).
The Old Spanish translation of Muhammad ibn cAbdallah ibn cUmar al-bayzar’s Kitab al-yawarih,
finished on April 9th, 1250, is usually, and somehow wrongly, known as the Book of Moamin. The
Old Spanish text is thus linked to a wider Latin tradition; however, it is better to consider it as an independent text related to the Latin Moamin.
The Book of Moamin is one of the densest works on falconry in any vernacular language. It is comprised of five treatises of varying length, with two main themes: 1) hunting birds, books 1 to 3, and 2) ‘animalias que caçan por sos dientes’, i.e. hunting dogs and other quadrupeds, books 4 and 5. At the same time each of the two main sections can be subdivided into another two: a) a description of the animals, the characteristics of the best individuals, how to rear, tame and train them (books 1 and 4), and b) their ailments, how they should be treated and how injuries can be prevented (books 2, 3 and 5).
Its influence was quite widespread and could be felt from the early 14th up to the mid-16th century.
The Libro de la montería by King Alphonso of Castile and León is the most indebted to it (alFonso
XI 1983).
Contemporary to the Libro de los animales que cazan are a series of what have been labelled as ‘lesser treatises’. They are four short books – Dancus Rex, Guillelmus falconarius, Tratado de las
enfermedades de las aves de caza and Libro de los azores – that have come down to us in an early 14th
-century manuscript housed in El Escorial Library, Madrid (ms. V.II.19; cf. Fradejas rueda 1985).
The Tratado de las enfermedades de las aves de caza is a collection of 49 different remedies to relieve
hunting birds from their ailments. Half of the text is a translation of the Latin Gerardus falconarius; most of it, however, comes from several different sources, some of them still unidentified.
The Dancus rex is the most widely known medieval falconry treatise. Besides the copies of the
Latin ‘original’, there are known translations into Castilian, Italian, French, Portuguese, Catalan, English and Swedish. It loaned not only material, but also its title and authority to other works. This collection of remedies for falcons’ illnesses is preceded by a very interesting prologue located in an Eastern setting in which we are told why it was compiled.
The Guillelmus falconarius seems to be the work of William the Falconer, a falconer to the Norman
kings of Sicily. Most critics believe that this short work is a gloss or commentary to Dancus Rex. This may be because there is not a clear division between these two works, and some chapters refer back to what was said in the preceding Dancus Rex: ‘superior dicta est’. The extant Spanish version is incomplete while the Catalan gives the full text.
Like the works already discussed, the Libro de los azores consists of a collection, in its longest version of 41 short sections, on the handling and care of birds of prey. It is mainly devoted to the goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), and to a lesser extent to the sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus). Most of it is a translation of the Liber medicaminum avium.
The Llibre de les medecines dels ocells is a text preserved in a Catalan manuscript that contains the
Catalan versions of Dancus Rex and Guillemus Falconarius (Fradejas rueda 2008a). This Llibre is
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a rather complex work from the linguistic point of view: it looks like Catalan but, according to some critics, the author seems to be writing some parts in French and others in Occitan. This text is a long poem divided into 37 chapters: 26 of them are a translation of the Liber medicaminum avium; four others come from the same source as the Libro de los azores; two have their antecedent in the Tractatus
de avibus; however, there is not a clear source for the remaining five chapters.
The 14th century is the boundary between the old model of falconry treatises – collections of
remedies written in Latin – and a new type of work. One key feature of the new kind of hawking books is that they are written in vernacular. Secondly, they will not be only a collection of remedies but a handbook on how to train and hunt with birds of prey. Thirdly, there is room for personal stories and anecdotes that relieve the tediousness of the subject. The books are Juan Manuel’s Libro
de la caza, Pero Menino’s Livro de falcoaria and Pero López de Ayala’s Libro de la caza de las aves.
For some time, Juan Manuel’s Libro de la caza was regarded as the first and most important Span-ish hawking book (Fradejas rueda 2001). Though it is important and very interesting, it is not a keystone in the history of the Hispanic books on falconry because no other author or compiler, apart from López de Ayala’s two short mentions, made any use of the work.
Juan Manuel’s Libro de la caza is the first Hispanic book that devotes most of its doctrine to the practical aspects of the hunt: the choice of the right bird and the proper way of handling and training her, though limited to falcones altaneros or falcons of the tower. The work can be divided into three main sections: the first two cover the classic matter found in this kind of book: description, selection and training (ch. 1–10) as well as ailments and how to heal them (ch. 11); but Juan Manuel was not very fond of this last facet of the sport. The third section deals with a new aspect: the geography of the chase. Unfortunately, only the sections dealing with three of the 15 promised bishoprics have been preserved. It is a fascinating journey through the lands of the bishoprics of Cuenca, Cartagena and Sigüenza (Central South-eastern Spain) seen through a falconer’s eyes, and Juan Manuel’s expla-nations are dotted here and there with hunting stories and claims of his own veracity, designed to relieve the reader from the tedium of a dull description. This section may be regarded as a field guide to the best hunting locations and the kind of quarry most likely to be found in those territories during the first quarter of the 14th century. In the prologue, Juan Manuel announces a fourth section, not
on hawking but on the other sort of hunt available to the medieval noble: venery or hunting of noble beasts, but it has been lost. If this had come down to us, it would have been the first Spanish book to combine both kinds of hunt: falconry and venery. As it is, this combination is only achieved 225 years later, in an extraordinarily long and dense work: Juan Vallés’ Libro de acetrería y montería (1556).
For a long time Juan Manuel’s Libro was considered to be the most original work as it did not make use of any sources. However, it has been demonstrated that he had an unsuspected model: Frederick II’s De arte venandi cum avibus (Fradejas rueda 2005b). Juan Manuel did not borrow
any material; what he did was to adapt the division of the material devised by Frederick II in his extremely long work into a short manual providing sound advice to any newcomer to the sport.
Between 1385 and 1386, during the time that Pero López de Ayala was imprisoned at the castle of Óvidos (Portugal) after the Castilian defeat at Aljubarrota (August 14th, 1385), he wrote what has
been called the most famous and influential Spanish book on falconry, his Libro de la caza de las aves. Ayala himself tells us the main reasons why he wrote it. Firstly, because ‘in the art and science of falconry I had observed so many doubts’ and secondly ‘to avoid the vice of idleness I set myself to the task of writing in this little treatise all I found to be right’ (lóPez de ayala 1986, 50).
In Cummins’ critical edition of Ayala’s work (lóPez de ayala 1986) were listed 22 copies. The number has soared to 35 copies, and they can be found in Spanish, Italian (3 copies), French (2), British (1) and American Libraries (4; cf. dIeTrIck smIThbauer/Fradejas rueda 2012).
